


The Theory of the Dimension Gate (Rambling Edition)

by Have



Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Gaiden, Saiyuki Ibun, 幽☆遊☆白書 | YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 07:04:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16424648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Have/pseuds/Have
Summary: Because I suck at fanfiction, but still feel that this crossover NEEDS TO HAPPEN, this idea is up for adoption.I GIVE THIS TO YOU, FANFICTION COMMUNITY!Warning: Some spoilers for the manga version of Yu Yu Hakusho, Saiyuki Gaiden, and recent chapters of Saiyuki Reload Blast!(Additional Warning: This version involves...er...rambling. The paragraphs present in this version that are cut from the version available to all readers mostly relate to my personal thought processes involving this premise as well as the bare bones of an OC-verse and are not necessary to understand the theory or create your own OC-verse.)





	The Theory of the Dimension Gate (Rambling Edition)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MsMK](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMK/gifts), [Tsula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsula/gifts).



> I have a tumblr for fandom theories and ideas. It's mostly UnderTale stuff right now, but if I think of anything anime-related it'll end up there, too: noplotnostory.tumblr.com
> 
> Please let me know if you see any typos or mistakes!

So one day I was watching FX and this movie came on that I had never seen before called “RIPD”. When the main characters found out about this world-threatening ancient artifact called Jericho's Staff, one of them straight-up said “Why would anyone even BUILD such a thing?!” Not only was this a brilliant line (in my opinion) but it got me thinking...who does build this all this stuff in supernatural horror and action films?

 

So that's where this idea comes from. That one line. Just so you know. That movie's to blame.

 

Weeeeeeeeeeell, that movie and the elements of Yu Yu Hakusho's manga ending that the anime didn't use.

 

And my curiosity towards the rules of hanyou/half-breeds in Saiyuki.

A quick note on that point, before we continue: It is theorized in Saiyuki that hanyou—or youkai (demon) and human half-breeds—are taboo at least partially because they are sterile. Like a mule or a liger. The problem is, donkeys don't turn into horses, or vice versa. The same is true for lions and tigers. Considering how Hakkai in Saiyuki becomes a youkai by being covered in the blood of so many youkai and the Toguro brothers in Yu Yu Hakusho do the same as a reward at the end of a tournament in which many youkai participated, maybe the central difference is the energy each species uses? Reiki (translated as spirit energy) for humans and Youki (translated as demon energy) for youkai? Maybe humans become youkai by being flooded with youkai energy until it changes their very biochemical makeup. Also, the basis of the fandom accepting the whole “half-breeds are sterile” theory as canon is that Dr. Ni theorizes it. That's it. He theorizes it. He doesn't know for sure, and we never see him experiment with the possibility (in the manga thus far, at least—I haven't seen the whole anime and the manga is still ongoing).

[Also, this is a rant I've made before, but youkai are not the same thing as devils. That is to say, the association of demons with the Devil and Hell is largely a linguistic error from when Christianity spread through Europe. Originally demons referred to the fae folk (who can be good, evil, or morally ambiguous) whilst the minions of evil were known as devils (with a small d). Japanese mythology and culture likewise has a distinction between youkai (which are similar to the fae and are usually translated as demons when manga and anime reaches English-speaking countries) and akuma (which you may have heard of from D.Gray-man, but the fact is that it is a pre-existing term referring to devils or beings of pure evil).]

 

So in Saiyuki Gaiden, we learn that Li Touten's family built the Dimension Gate which separates the Heavenly Bureaucracy from the mortal world, leading to his then-high-ranking family being demoted to a position of low-level servitude to keep them from gaining too much power over the political workings of Heaven. Now, we don't know how long ago that was, but apparently it was at least before Li Touten was born—or maybe just while he was small enough to be raised in servitude—and he was a full-grown man 500 years before the events of the main storyline of Saiyuki. Well... A full-grown god with a lifespan far longer than any human. I mean, the Merciful Goddess hasn't aged a day in 500 years, so there's no telling how long it takes anyone to grow up in Heaven. The point is that all of this clearly happened a VERY long time ago.

My first idea was that Li Touten's family may have lied about inventing the gate themselves and that a human was involved. This human was undeniably brilliant but still naïve enough to fall for promises of life in paradise. When he was betrayed and sent back to the mortal world, he became obsessed with finding his way back up into heaven—either by building a new gate, or breaking down the one he built already. I never intended for him to gradually come unhinged, though. Oh, no. His mental instability was born the moment he was cast out, or even before, as a safeguard to keep mortals out of heaven. His insanity is designed to cause other humans to dismiss him as well as completely destroying his mind if he ever gets too close to returning to the domain of the gods. It's also designed to be hereditary. That's right, to secure their own position in the Heavenly Bureaucracy, Li Touten's family condemned an entire bloodline of humans to obsessive tendencies and the ever-present threat of losing their ability to comprehend logic.

To be entirely honest, I was mostly inspired for this initial patriarch, the starting point of the Obsessive Family Line, by reading a Cracked.com article (http://www.cracked.com/article_18501_7-incredible-scientific-innovations-held-back-by-petty-feuds.html). The story of John Harrison and his determination to prove that his invention was the right one for the job just seemed to sync up with the world as I was imagining it. He's from the wrong time period (and region of the world, if I'm being honest) for it, but the idea of this personality, this intelligence being that stubborn just clicked for me. The more I developed this world, though, the more the John Harrison-equivalent instead became part of the second generation alongside the Philip Lemarchand-equivalent (the inventor of the Lemarchand Configuration in the book The Hellbound Heart, better known as the Lament Configuration from the Hellraiser movie franchise).

With these two as brothers my brain sort of decided that JH was the one to carry on the bloodline—albeit while probably ticking off his wife considering the amount of time he spent rebuilding the same clock over and over with no recognition or monetary gain until decades later—and PL totally didn't. When he made the Configuration he either vanishes from the history books due to entering the “space between spaces”, or just triggers the whole “driven too insane to function” clause due to basically figuring out how to cut through dimensions. I mean, he triggers it either way, but whether he lives and dies in the human world like that or becomes functionally immortal in the “space between spaces” varies. Depending on who ends up taking the role of Smart Guy in the Main Four of the OC-verse (have I addressed the OC-verse, yet? No? Ok well, I'll get to that later).

(Actually the main reason why I loved incorporating these two so much is because at least in the Hellbound Heart book, Philip Lemarchand made mechanical singing birds. And in real life, John Harrison made clocks. It sort of set a precedent in my mind where a lot of the early mad scientist stuff that the Obsessive Family Line churned out had a lot of clockwork and music box gears and not only was that visually interesting, but it worked for explaining something that always bothered me in Thirteen Ghosts. Now, I love the character of Dennis Rafkin in the kinda-sorta-but-not-really remake of Thirteen Ghosts. So because I basically FrankenFic'ed this monstrosity of a timeline together in my head, there's a Dennis Rafkin-equivalent in the OC-verse. He doesn't happen until closer to the actual story line where all of the Main Four actually exist or are soon going to exist. Now, depending—again!—on what other characters take certain roles, DR always ended up either as the Main Character/Hero within the Main Four, or High Triad Father Figure of the Main Character/Hero (I'll explain that more later, too). In the versions where he was in the Main Four instead of the High Triad, the actual events of Thirteen Ghosts was his backstory—or at least part of it—and the reason why the whole “smashing the tapes” thing worked to stop the ghosts and make the house break down is because the guy who had the house built tried to modernize/cut costs in the construction and neglected a very important part of the instructions. The sound that was controlling the ghosts was supposed to be made by part of the mechanisms, not a bunch of tapes or even a bunch of chanting people (which may have been what the movie was trying to imply was supposed to be the original source of the sound in the original plans for the house/machine, but I didn't think of that until about halfway through this paragraph, so...). Now that would be hard to build and calibrate, but it also would have been a lot harder to destroy once actually in place.)

Of course, now that I'm writing this all down, it's just crossed my mind that Li Touten himself is an obsessive, vengeful man who is intelligent enough to conduct (really sketchy) genetic experiments, so maybe instead there being a human who was conned into helping, a member or branch of Li Touten's family was exiled to live among the mortals. Now I understand that the Saiyuki anime has a few god-in-the-mortal-world characters, but I'm sticking with the manga for my references and so far the manga hasn't really addressed what would happen or whether or not it was possible for gods to be turned into humans without reincarnating centuries later the way Konzen/Sanzo and company did. And that gives fanfiction writers plenty of room to play around with what they think might happen.

(Either way, yes. I am totally saying that whoever built the Dimension Gate is also shared ancestor of everyone who's ever built a doomsday artifact. Like, think of any supernatural horror or action film involving some end-of-the-world machine or spell. Someone from that bloodline's probably designed or built something like that in the OC-verse (although not always out of any malicious intent). It's just fun for me to imagine that.)

 

The thing is, it would take some effort to make this work with the anime ending of Yu Yu Hakusho, but with the manga ending, it is super easy. Aside from the mortality of a beloved secondary character, some quick-paced catching up with allies of the YYH gang and the absence of the major battles shown in the final season of the anime, the YYH manga ends on a note that kind of sums up everything that happened since Yusuke was given the mission to rescue Yukina: Youkai were never the bad guys.

Sure, don't get me wrong, there were plenty of youkai antagonists, but the biggest threats and most sadistic enemies in the YYH universe tended to be humans. Or they were originally humans that chose to be youkai in the case of the elder Toguro brother. Even Yomi is a kinda-sorta-maybe “friendly” enemy after he got to brawl against Yusuke in the Demon World Tournament. In the end, his character is aggressive, vengeful and deceptive, but he's capable of respecting those he disagrees with and following the laws Enki makes. A certain character from Mukuro's backstory in the manga may or may not disprove this, but that's only one youkai and the audience is given no indication of that character's origins. That character could be a human-turned-youkai such as the Toguro brothers in YYH or Hakkai in Saiyuki.

(Dr. Ichigaki in the Dark Tournament Saga doesn't count because he was in the human world for an unspecified amount of time and therefore the manga ending might apply to him.)

But I digress. The element in the Yu Yu Hakusho manga ending that I find works so well with merging the Saiyuki and YYH worlds is that King Enma—king of the spirit world and father of Prince Koenma—is a corrupt murderer who's been brainwashing and executing youkai to generate unnecessary conflict between the already walled-off youkai population and his own people. When Yusuke finds out about this, he even wonders how many of the youkai he supposedly “brought to justice” as a Spirit Detective were actually killed for something they did not willingly do. Kurama advises that he not think about it too much. I don't really get why they cut that from the anime, actually. I mean, it seems like a downer ending, but it's better than what the anime implies. In both endings, the barrier is down and while Enki has decreed that youkai are not allowed to assault humans, he's also made it clear that he only intends to be king for a few years before another tournament takes place to decide the next ruler. If the youkai are as big a threat as the spirit world seems to think, that doesn't bode well for humanity.

This actually sort of ties back into the point I made earlier about why hanyous are taboo in the world of Saiyuki. I mean, we have no actual proof that there's any inherent consequences to humans and youkai interbreeding aside from the child having red hair and eyes. The gods tell Sanzo at the beginning of Saiyuki that the taboo against youkai magic and human technology being combined is similar to the taboo against hanyou. They give us a reason for the magic and technology taboo by explaining that it creates a Minus Wave that causes youkai to loose their sense of self and start eating humans. Except there's three things suggesting that's not actually what's happening. One, the youkai village that Goku, Gojyo and Hakkai come across while separated from Sanzo in the manga is full of youkai that have apparently regained their “sense of self”—although their appetite for human flesh remains (which I will revisit later). Two, it turns out that the Minus Wave was not just an incidental side-effect of what Dr. Ni and Gyokumen Koushou are doing. They're doing it on purpose. And three, WHAT ABOUT HAKKAI'S EYE?! Hakkai has a mechanical eye replacing the one he plucked out (in the manga, he only scratched it in the anime) and yet even when he removes his limiters and reveals his youkai form, the only indication we get that the technology is even there is that one eye stays green while the other turns yellow. There is a piece of human technology shoved into his face, but his youkai energy isn't causing any negative side effects? If the gods are telling the truth, that doesn't really fit. I figure they're either lying or don't actually know (like Prince Koenma didn't actually know much about youkai in the YYH manga) but like I said before, the Saiyuki manga isn't complete yet, so I could be proven wrong.

 

Also, I find that the youkai species (subspecies?) that Yusuke is descended from appears to have more in common with the majority of youkai of Saiyuki than any other youkai in Yu Yu Hakusho do. The two most distinct identifying physical features for youkai in Saiyuki is long, pointed ears and strange, tattoo-like markings. Yusuke's ancestor Raizen seems to fit the description better than any other Yu Yu Hakusho youkai that come to mind. True, Yusuke doesn't gain the pointed ears, even when his hair turns white and those markings appear on his body, but the fact that he was actually born a hanyou (albeit with a more watered-down youkai lineage than any of the confirmed hanyou in Saiyuki's manga or anime (and there are no other confirmed hanyou in YYH—we don't even know which side of Yusuke's family Raizen is from)) might mean that his biology was already prepared to adapt to the youkai energy and therefore had to adapt less. It is even explained in-universe that Yusuke's second death triggered his youkai heritage while his first death didn't specifically because his time as Spirit Detective made him both stronger and more receptive to supernatural forces—he simply wasn't able to tap into his latent youkai abilities the first time around.

There are other species of youkai present in Saiyuki, the most prevalent in my mind being the Dark Spider Clan that are sent as the first group of assassins to deliberately attack the Main Four—while the others could be basically any type of youkai, the leader is almost definitely a jorōgumo, a Japanese spider youkai that is known to shapeshift into beautiful women in order to lure their prey—but most youkai only display the characteristics that distinguish them either as individual characters, or just apart from humans in general. What type of youkai they are is almost never addressed and mostly not even hinted at. There is, for example, a centipede youkai and a scorpion youkai...but their appearances in the manga never really reflect that. It's only ever either explained in dialogue or shown in their abilities. As a result, we don't really get a clear idea of how many of any one type of youkai exist in Saiyuki, despite the fact that we have a better idea of the scope of the world in Saiyuki than we do in Yu Yu Hakusho. In Saiyuki, humans and youkai share the same world, which is based on our world. In Yu Yu Hakusho, the youkai have a separate world which is...big. Really, really big. No one knows how big. And that's all the explanation we get. But we see populations of obviously distinct species interacting amongst themselves and with each other, giving a better idea of the level of diversity in YYH's youkai than we have with Saiyuki's. Sure, Saiyuki's world is smaller, but one spider-based clan, one centipede-based clan (both of whom we only know for sure that the leader and their direct descendants actually have such animal-based abilities), one lonesome scorpion youkai and a few youkais with wings compared to the sheer volume of everyday pointy-eared youkai doesn't imply a significant population.

Back to Yusuke, though. In Saiyuki, hanyou all have red hair and eyes, but there's no evidence on whether or not hanyou can reproduce, let alone whether or not their children would have red hair or eyes nor their grandchildren and so on and so forth—which means that it could be possible for someone whose hanyou lineage is so many generations deep, like Yusuke's, to have other hair or eye colors. Since we never see a first-generation hanyou in YYH, it is entirely possible that they have red hair and eyes like the first-generation hanyou of Saiyuki. Or maybe the red hair and eyes aren't a natural event. King Enma in the Yu Yu Hakusho manga put a barrier around the world of youkai not because of any danger to humans, but because the higher-class youkai were a physical danger to him. Likewise, most of the gods of Saiyuki seem more concerned about what the resurrection of Gyumaoh means for them than what the Minus Wave means for humans and/or youkai. If youkai are such a threat and hanyou have similar power despite being more human in appearance, why wouldn't they mark the hanyou to keep in mind what they are? And why not claim that they are taboo to prevent more being born?

(For fans of the Yu Yu Hakusho anime, yes, the theory of red hair being a result of conflicting human and youkai energies could be used to explain why Kurama has red hair...except in the manga he doesn't have red hair. Both his hair and uniform were recolored in the anime to give each member of the Main Four a distinctive color scheme.)

There is another hanyou-related coincidence that I'd like to point out, actually. While Yusuke has very powerful energy, he isn't as sensitive to recognizing and tracking energies as Kuwabara. Kurama and Hiei also seem more aware of energies than Yusuke is, but that could be chalked up to experience. Likewise, Kuwabara's abilities could just be because he's a very powerful psychic—a trait that appears to be hereditary. But...what about Gojyo in Saiyuki? According to the trivia section of Gojyo's wiki page, the author of Saiyuki has confirmed Gojyo (the hanyou member of Saiyuki's Main Four) has the least spiritual awareness of the group and is therefore the least likely to see or notice a ghost. This is probably a coincidence, but if I'm going to speculate on the rules of these worlds and how they could fit together, coincidences must be explored~ It could end up fitting into the whole “hanyou are taboo” thing, or it might just be a benign occurrence that the gods aren't even fully aware of, but if the main difference between youkai and humans are the energy types that run through them and hanyou are a mix of both, maybe the two energies trying to establish a balance within them are clouding their perception of the energies outside of themselves. Like when your ears are ringing and you can't hear anything around you over that sound. Even without an active conflict between the two energies, their differences could take up a lot of the hanyou's subconscious to keep in check. If they aren't fighting each other, they might be building on each other—which would explain Yusuke's exponential leaps in power throughout the manga, actually. Huh.

Of course, Gojyo is sort of the opposite in that he's considerably weaker than Goku or Hakkai despite having the best stamina out of the Main Four, but let's actually go ahead and compare Gojyo, Yusuke, Hakkai and Kurama (I'm not even going to bother comparing Hiei to Goku because...well...while they both fit the Big Guy role in a Five-Man Band (despite being the shortest member of their respective Main Four), Hiei is a powerful youkai and Goku is something beyond that with a direct link to the Earth itself and possibly unlimited power). Kurama and Hakkai have a lot in common (the details of which I'll discuss later), but what matters right now is that they were both originally one thing and later became something else before the start of their respective mangas. Despite literally being reborn, Kurama arguably went through less of a change than Hakkai since his abilities remain of the same nature, although not the same level. In this sense, Hakkai has a lot in common with Yusuke since while Yusuke is a hanyou by birth, it's been watered down by so many generations of human ancestry that his youkai energy only started physically affecting him in the later half of Yu Yu Hakusho. Also, like Kurama, Yusuke's abilities remain pretty much the same attacks that they were before, but instead of being hampered by human limitations, they're being bolstered by youkai power.

And now for Gojyo. Because the Saiyuki manga is still ongoing, I don't really know what is going to happen, but the most recent chapters showed that the Main Four's newfound proximity to the source of the Minus Wave is causing Gojyo to gain some more youkai characteristics—much like how being close to the tunnel in the Chapter Black Arc forcibly transformed Kurama—which thus far has manifested in a marking on the back of his neck. Maybe we'll be seeing an increase in power like Yusuke's. Or maybe his subconscious will automatically try to limit any surge in Youki because Gojyo is a first-generation hanyou who has been dealing with balancing both energies all his life unlike Yusuke whose powers only became available after dying. I mean, Kuwabara's subconscious prevented him from sensing the Toguro brothers' power because it would overload his sanity, so why wouldn't hanyou have similar psychological safeguards for their own potentially volatile abilities? Either way, this situation is probably going to be very rough for poor Gojyo, but his previously established difference in power level from Yusuke does make sense.

 

In the Oasis Arc of Saiyuki Reload, it is revealed that youkai continuously exposed to the effects of the Minus Wave eventually regain their “sense of self”—at least to the point of expressing individual traits and thoughts and developing a functional community, since we don't actually know how any of these people behaved before the Minus Wave and therefore do not have the data to know if the way they behave in the Oasis Arc is the same “sense of self” that they had beforehand—but the appetite for human flesh remains. Aside from the physical traits mentioned earlier, it's this revelation that really connects the youkai of Saiyuki to the mazoku youkai of Yu Yu Hakusho (the type of youkai that post-Black Chapter Arc Yusuke and his ancestor Raizen are). When Yusuke's youkai traits are awakened, his perspective on the nature of humanity and it's relation to youkai as a species is altered to the point that he suggests kidnapping humans to feed Raizen once he discovers said mazoku was starving to death. Yeah, it turns out that Raizen swearing off eating humans to honor his lover had a significant impact on his health. He continued to live for centuries afterwards, but that was mostly because he was such a strong youkai to begin with and the long-term effects of his new diet ended up weakening him and severely shortening his lifespan. Again, he was very strong compared to most non-mazoku youkai and lived much longer than any human could hope to, but the average lifespan of a dolphin is estimated to be about twenty years and that's pretty young for a human, so...

At one point, Raizen asks Yusuke if the latter has any craving for human flesh—to which the answer is “no”—and comes to the conclusion that Yusuke and/or Raizen's descendents leading up to Yusuke's generation have evolved to live peacefully among humans. Much like most youkai in Saiyuki lived in relative peace alongside humans before the Minus Wave brought chaos. In Yu Yu Hakusho, most humans cannot even see youkai, they have to possess some amount of spiritual awareness first; but in Saiyuki the populations lived side-by-side and interacted on a daily basis, which suggests to me that either the humans in the world of Saiyuki have a higher average spiritual awareness than the humans in the world of Yu Yu Hakusho or something has effected either species populating Yu Yu Hakusho to restrict interactions between them (most likely the first option, in my opinion). Either way, the youkai of Saiyuki have had enough consistent exposure to humans and human society to evolve the way Raizen believes Yusuke's bloodline has, but are still early enough in the process that when their human-eating traits are jump-started it feels totally natural and normal for them to make that part of their daily lives.

 

There are two particular fanfictions that I've read in the past that I feel work very well with the theoretical possibilities of merging the universes of YYH and Saiyuki. I can't remember what they're called, but there was a Yu Yu Hakusho oneshot that I read on AO3 and a Saiyuki oneshot that I think I read on FF.net, but it might have been another site... Anyways, the YYH oneshot (which I finally managed to find after writing this paragraph, although the Saiyuki fic is still MIA: (http://archiveofourown.org/works/3615048)) addressed something that was kind of in the subtext of the manga and anime but was never directly addressed in either: Yusuke and his youkai ancestor were strong enough to potentially kill King Enma, himself. Most of the spirit world in YYH was absolutely terrified of them! This certainly reinforces the motivations behind the manga-confirmed conspiracy that lead to a barrier being formed between the human and youkai realms and any youkai that passed through it being hunted down and often executed for various reasons, but it also strikes me as similar to the Heavenly Bureaucracy's stance towards heretical beings such as Nataku and Goku.

(Here's an interesting bit of linguistic trivia~ The “ma” in “mazoku” translates to “devil” and is used to indicate a creature that poses threat to humanity or openly scorns the gods. “Mazoku” is actually used quite often in theology and fiction to describe “devils, demons and evil beings”. Although it gets more ethical wiggle room in fantasy works, according to Wikipedia.)

Meanwhile, the Saiyuki oneshot was centered around Goku and a monk who was trying to give him lessons at Chang'An. Goku shows an extraordinary amount of intelligence in this scene, but more importantly, he points out something that I find very interesting. The scrolls that the Sanzo priests protect with their lives? That contain such immense divine power and are to be kept far away from each other? Their known as the Founding Scriptures of Heaven and Earth and the monks claim that they were instrumental in the creation of the world itself, but the language written on the scrolls is not old enough to have been used at the beginning of the world. If the legend of the scrolls being used in creating the world is an actual legend that was or is believed in the real world, then that's a big religious question that I would rather stay out of, but in the context of the Saiyuki world? Well, the fact that it's fiction gives us a bit of leeway.

With my theory, after the gate was built (either by Li Touten's family or by a human who wasn't kept around long enough to take any credit) the gods went to work splitting the then-existing world into three different ones. The Founding Scriptures of Heaven and Earth were utilized to either divide the then-existing physical plane or create two new ones. When the various species populating the original world were assigned which world to inhabit, most youkai ended up in the world of Yu Yu Hakusho and were supervised by King Enma (and eventually sealed away from humans and the spirit world) while the Founding Scriptures were split into five and scattered across the world of Saiyuki which was supervised by the higher-ranking gods of the Heavenly Bureaucracy (and Li Touten's Obsessive Family Line ended up in the OC-verse).

 

Now, let's talk Character Patterns. I've used the phrase “Main Four” a couple times already, and I imagine anyone who's seen Saiyuki or Yu Yu Hakusho has an idea of what I mean by that. Now, in breaking down the roles in my mind I've used the terms that TV Tropes uses for breaking down a Five-Man Band, minus the Chick (TV Tropes actually listed Hakkai as the “Chick” for Saiyuki's Five-Man Band at one point, but if Jeep (known as Hakuryuu in the anime) is excluded when the number goes down from five to four—which only makes sense with the character dynamics and their previous lives in Gaiden taken into account—then Hakkai is the best fit for the Smart Guy role even if you dismiss his similarities to Kurama).

I've been calling the “Leader” the Main Character/Hero because...well, in the context of these specific stories, that is exactly what he is. Yu Yu Hakusho is the story of Yusuke's explorations of and adventures through a world that he was unable to really see or interact with before his initial death in the first episode (even the parts that take place in the human world are so dependent on the existence of youkai, ghosts and/or psychic powers that Yusuke had no way of getting involved or even knowing that any of this was happening before said death; at best he might have been able to avoid getting swept in with the other human victims like Keiko did during the Maze Castle Arc, but without any spiritual powers, the most he could do is smack around some possessed classmates and teachers). Likewise, Saiyuki is the story of Sanzo's journey to prevent the resurrection of Gyumaoh. Unlike Yusuke, Sanzo is sent with his companions/the rest of his world's Main Four right at the beginning of the manga, but actually completing this task is considered his duty as a high-ranking priest while the other three are basically his divinely-chosen bodyguards, two of which he had essentially rescued or otherwise resolved backstory-relevant issues for prior to that point. Also, while the Main Four in Saiyuki tend to have equal amounts of screentime and character development, if you read or watch Saiyuki Gaiden, Sanzo's previous incarnation—Konzen Douji—is clearly the character that undergoes the most change. Goku gets a great deal of focus during Gaiden, but he's really more of a catalyst for change in other characters (namely Konzen and Nataku) than anything else. Meanwhile, Gojyo and Hakkai's previous incarnations don't actually seem to change at all. I mean, Hakkai's does in a flashback to when he first met Gojyo's, but by the time Goku arrives and the Gaiden story actually begins, they both have a firmly-established idea of what's right or wrong and how far they're willing to go to uphold those ideals that guides them throughout the rest of Gaiden. Ergo, it is Konzen's/Sanzo's story.

Aside from their shared role in their respective mangas, Yusuke and Sanzo have a few other similarities, such as the use of projectile weaponry (Yusuke's Rei Gun and Sanzo's...actual gun) and their blatant disregard for propriety or regulations (otherwise a middle-schooler and a Buddhist monk wouldn't be drinking and smoking so openly). And then there's their jerkish attitudes and loyal and protective natures, but that's not really exclusive to them in either of their mangas or Main Fours.

The “Lancers” for Saiyuki and Yu Yu Hakusho are Gojyo and Kuwabara, respectively. Well, Kuwabara, at least, but Gojyo was listed as the Lancer of Saiyuki's cast back when TV Tropes still had a Five-Man Band template for Saiyuki up and he doesn't really fit any other role. Either way, they match up rather nicely when looking for parallels between the Main Fours. First of all, they both have rather abrasive and rude mannerisms that contribute to their “punk” and “delinquent” reputations, but they also tend to be the most soft-hearted of their respective circles, being the most likely to go out of their ways to openly sympathize with, assist and protect kittens, crying women and small children—even if they happen to be their opponents. Of any members of the Main Fours of either manga, these two are the most likely to get in trouble just from being too nice. Even after everything they've seen and all the prejudices and abuse they've had to deal with, both Kuwabara and Gojyo are suckers for a good sob-story.

They're also the most irrelevant-seeming characters of their respective Main Fours. Kuwabara spends most of Yu Yu Hakusho playing catch-up with the others and shocking everyone around him whenever he actually manages to win (which is more often than you'd think, considering he's a full-blooded human going up against high-class, blood-thirsty youkai), until he realizes that he's not going to be able to top Yusuke's mazoku-enhanced power and decides to focus on and prepare for his future in the human world whilst his friends go off to settle their own affairs in the youkai realm. Gojyo similarly falls behind at least two of his three companions in power level and since the third is Sanzo—y'know, the priest who carries the Scripture and whose mission the whole “Journey to the West” thing is?—he seems to be just an extra body...until he leaves the group for a while to carry out his own objective and everyone else is suddenly too grumpy to function.

Also, despite having less offensive power than their companions (which is still a lot more than the average person in either manga's world, to be fair), they both kind of tend to just...keep going. I'm not just talking about the normal, determination-driven Shoujo-character shtick, either. Gojyo is able to stay on his feet and keep fighting for far longer than anyone else in Saiyuki's Main Four and Kuwabara can endure an insane amount of punishment for a human teenager. In the Dark Tournament Arc, Kuwabara almost loses a fight against a youkai with earth-based powers. He takes a major beating and spends almost all of his Reiki. Then he sees Yukina (who is either his crush or his soulmate, depending on who you ask) and immediately is on his feet, taking out his opponent without even noticing. This seems like it's played for comedy, but she offers to heal his injuries later only to discover that his energy is mostly replenished and his wounds are already half-way healed. Since Kuwabara has impressive psychic abilities and by the end of manga is the strongest full-blooded human in the world, it's entirely possible that moment wasn't just a joke.

The Lancers also both use the same types of weapons as their relative Main Fours' Big Guys. Gojyo and Goku managed to shatter some pottery in the monastery before the start of the Saiyuki manga and each received an enchanted staff-like weapon that they could summon at will—although the similarities pretty much end there as the staffs have entirely different features suited for different combat styles. Kuwabara learned to summon his spirit energy in the form of a sword...and Hiei's favored weapon was a sword long before meeting any of his companions. In fact, Hiei is capable of lacing his sword with youkai energy for a more effective attack, but he makes a point of avoiding this because it reminds him too much of Kuwabara's sword.

Hiei and Goku both fill the role of the “Big Guy”, being absolute powerhouses from birth. In fact, their power levels at the start of their respective mangas are considerably less than they had as children. Hiei's drop in power was voluntary; it was a side-effect of having the Jagan eye implanted in his forehead, which had long-term benefits that he felt outweighed the temporary loss of power. Goku's was forced upon him. When the Heavenly Bureaucracy discovered his existence, they immediately forged a limiter in the shape of a diadem and brought him to the Merciful Goddess to decide what must be done with him. Which actually leads nicely into another thing they have in common: Being unwanted and ostracized for existing. Literally, for existing. Goku is a “heretic being”, born in a manner unsanctioned by the Heavenly Bureaucracy and naturally powerful enough to cause immense damage to the gods. Hiei is an imiko and likewise was born in a manner that the people around him found unacceptable. He was born male. Specifically, he was born a male from a mother whose youkai type—the koorime—were an all-female race that usually reproduced asexually every one hundred years. The fact that he was a male meant he had a father, which was both a social taboo and something that was incredibly dangerous, since any sons produced by the koorime tended to be powerful and ill-tempered to the point of being a danger to their society. So he was sentenced to death as an infant and tossed off the side of a cliff. The Heavenly Bureaucracy was unable to kill Goku when they found reason to do so (it was a long and complicated series of events. Just read Saiyuki Gaiden if you're curious) so they wiped his memories and trapped him in a mountain for five hundred years, instead.

Naturally, they both had rather lonely lives before meeting the rest of their respective Main Fours and have some abandonment issues as a result. It's really easy to see with Goku. He physically and emotionally clings to his companions assurance and validation quite often. Hiei is a little more subtle. That moment where he absolutely slaughters Seiryu for killing his own ally probably seems a little out-of-character for any first-time watchers of Yu Yu Hakusho, but the fact of the matter is that he despises broken or betrayed alliances and makes a point of keeping his word and maintaining any truce he's agreed to even though he doesn't seem like the type to be a team player. His refusal to let Yukina know that he's her brother is also implied to be due to his fear of being rejected by the only family he has.

Speaking of Yukina, both of the Big Guys are possibly still adolescents. I mean, Goku definitely is at the start of the Saiyuki manga. During his 500 years of exile, Goku was unable to age, physically or mentally (although he managed to gain some severe trauma that lead to a fear of snow), so only reached the physical age of 18 at the beginning of the manga. Hiei, on the other hand, is Yukina's twin, and since she is a koorime, many fans speculate that if they were more than 100 years old, she would have had a child by now, and neither of them seem like the type to just ignore the fact that there is a niece or daughter somewhere. The reason why I said “possibly” at the beginning of this paragraph is because while that is an interesting theory that I have no way of disproving, I also can't definitively say it must be true because neither Hiei nor Yukina are full-blooded koorime and the manga never confirmed how their father's genetics affected their rate of aging or reproductive cycles.

Now for the “Smart Guys”. The stories of how they became part of the Main Four in their respective mangas are actually one of their similarities. It starts with them mortally injured and on the run. At this point, Kurama is reborn in the body of a human child to go into hiding and recover, while Hakkai is taken in the other half of his eventual BFF Pairing to go into hiding and recover. Kurama grows close to a woman who becomes like family to him (and actually is family to the body he resides in, but he has thousands of years of memories before being born in that body, so he didn't really see her as a mother until after she performed a selfless act that prompted him to actually care about people) and meets the other half of his eventual BFF Pairing before the family-figure woman ends up in mortal peril and Kurama takes morally-dubious steps to ensure her safety. Hakkai has already grown close to a woman who was like family to him (although not in the way that she turned out to actually be biological family to him in the manga) and she has already been in peril and his taking morally-dubious steps in a (failed) attempt to ensure her safety is exactly what lead to him being injured and on the run. At this point, the Smart Guy is sure that he's going to die, and doesn't plan to do anything to stop it. The Hero/Main Character arrives to apprehend the Smart Guy for his morally-dubious doings and, after learning of the situation that lead to these doings, saves his life and helps him accomplish his goal (in Hakkai's case, the goal of just giving the woman he failed to save some peace in the afterlife). The Hero/Main Character either fights Smart Guy's BFF shortly after (Hiei) or had already fought him before finding out what was going on (Gojyo). Hakkai is apprehended and given a new name, metaphorically being reborn. Kurama is...kind of apprehended, and the Hero/Main Character is somewhat responsible for the Smart Guy's “rehabilitation” since Kurama (alongside Hiei) is assigned to work with Yusuke on his cases while on parole and Sanzo is in charge of making sure that Hakkai is a functioning and upright member of society. It's a little jumbled up, but a lot of the same plot points are there.

(The term “BFF Pairing” is basically the phrase I'm using for what TV Tropes calls “Heterosexual Life Partners” and will indicate the closest and most deeply-rooted relationships within the Main Fours' casts. Specifically: Yusuke and Kuwabara; Hiei and Kurama; Sanzo and Goku; and Gojyo and Hakkai.)

Kurama and Hakkai both had a history of being rather cold and antisocial individuals before the events of their respective mangas and are still very capable of hiding their true emotions. Despite this, they are considered the most polite, observant, level-headed and emotionally sensitive members of the Main Four, making them the ones that all the others get along with best. They're even the go-to confidante for heavy questions and emotional moments for the Hero/Main Character despite neither of them being in a BFF Pairing with them. They're also the ones that all the others are most scared of getting on the wrong side of, and for good reason. Also, they are definitely the Smart Guys, with Hakkai having had his choice of scholarships at several colleges and Kurama being a master strategist.

(This probably means absolutely nothing, but the heights from shortest to tallest of both Main Fours go “Big Guy, Hero/Main Character, Smart Guy, Lancer”. Again, probably means nothing. I just find it mildly interesting and moderately funny.)

Ok, so about Jeep...while he doesn't really fit into the Main Four template, he does still have a possible parallel in Yu Yu Hakusho: Puu. It's more of a stretch than the other parallels—especially since Puu is basically an extension of Yusuke while Jeep is a distinct soul who had a past life as two of Saiyuki's Main Four's boss—but they are both flying, shapeshifting, transport-providing non-humanoid supernatural creatures. I mean, Jeep can shift between a small dragon and an automobile at will and is with at least one of the Main Four at almost all times throughout the journey that the manga follows while Puu basically pokevolves into a larger more elegantly-shaped version of himself and spends most of his time on the sidelines or back home with Yusuke's mother and girlfriend, but I already said that this one was a stretch, what do you want from me?

And then there's the Little Sisters. In Yu Yu Hakusho this character is closely affiliated with the protagonists, while the Little Sister in Saiyuki is actually one of the antagonists—although both her and her older brother are very sympathetic antagonists whose personal motives are honorable enough, even though the plans they comply to are not. Both Little Sisters are youkai who feature a highly determined nature, a desire to see the outside world and an intense hatred of their own family aside from their dear brother or half-brother, with whom they have mutual care and respect absent in their other familial relationships. Last hint; the Little Sisters are also prone to being shipped with the other half of the Main Character/Hero's BFF Pairing (although the attraction of either party in the ship is only canonically confirmed in the case of YYH).

If the “determined nature” bit is tripping you up, I'd like to remind you that while Yukina is a quiet and respectful person, she also resisted torture for an unknown amount of time, not shedding a single tear in that time because she knew that was what she was being held captive for. Oh, and she went searching for her brother with the intention of reminding him to go back and kill off all the other koorime for what they did to him. If the “shipping” part is tripping you up...yeah, I know Saiyuki fancontent contains a lot of yaoi, but the only times I've ever seen Goku shipped with a female that isn't an unnamed Reader-Insert or the unnamed youkai from the Oasis Arc who died in a fiery explosion quickly after her introduction, it was Lirin. Aside from that one episode of the anime where the entire Main Four of Saiyuki had hand-picked pseudo-love-interests who ended up dying at the end, but good luck finding fanart featuring any of them.

(I actually kind of came up with an OC-verse equivalent for this, too. She's named and has a backstory, but she only fit in the OC-verse so long as the Smart Guy wasn't a member of the Obsessive Family Line. Actually, she was the first formed character of the OC-verse and is essentially a by-product of an old secondary character for a story that never got past the early conceptual stages getting scrapped. Parts of her backstory went into another character in one of my original works while the rest of her personality sort of naturally fell into the profile I was imagining for a descendant of the Obsessive Family Line that would have similar hacking/technological engineering skills as a couple of my favorite Reader-Inserts characters at the time (found on Lunaescence in a Yu Yu Hakusho fic (http://www.lunaescence.com/fics/viewstory.php?sid=7622&textsize=0&chapter=1) and a Teen Titans fic (http://www.lunaescence.com/fics/viewstory.php?sid=28307&textsize=0&chapter=1), respectively). Before I read Saiyuki Gaiden and realized that the Obsessive Family Line premise of the OC-verse was the perfect excuse to examine the parallels I kept seeing between Saiyuki and Yu Yu Hakusho, the only four characters that really existed/developed beyond their FrankenFic backstories and motivations were the Little Sister, the Father Figure, the Smart Guy and the Hero/Main Character. And, honestly? Aside from the Little Sister's backstory only fitting with one verson of the Smart Guy, she also was not a youkai and was a surrogate sister instead of a biological one, making her somewhat under-qualified as a parallel to Yukina or Lirin. Most importantly, despite the fact that I never intended to write this out as an actual fic, I really, really ended up loving the character dynamics I created...and I wanted to write it. Which is why I'm writing this all down and posting it online. I've stripped these characters of their backstories (and the Little Sister of her tech skills) to focus on the pseudo-sibling-rivalry, insecurities and one-sided mistrust that made me love her relationship with the Hero and putting a long-neglected character idea whose backstory I've had figured out for over half a decade in the place of the Father Figure (which actually works better for the “insecurities” bit than the Dennis Rafkin-equivalent does...) and building a story around that.)

Another interesting character pattern I saw show up in Saiyuki and Yu Yu Hakusho is a set of three powerful and authoritative individuals who have a large impact on the worlds they live in and the respective Main Four's lives without ever actually working together as a group. In fact, these three are political enemies in Yu Yu Hakusho. Yep. I mean the Three Kings: Raizen, Mukuro and Yomi. Their equivalents in Saiyuki are three human Sanzo priests: Koumyou, Sharak and Ukoku.

These groups of three have a remarkably similar formula of Father Figure to the Main Character/Hero (who is also incidently the oldest and most powerful of the three and does die at some point, as mentors/father figures often do in action-oriented media (how much time he spends with his “son” and when he dies in relation to the rest of the story may vary)), Notably Scarred Woman (who tends to be more respectful towards the Father Figure than the Upstart and either hides her gender for a while (Mukuro) or insists that she be seen as her title rather than her gender (Sharak)), and Upstart (who is the youngest and most antagonistic of the three, although still older than the Main Character/Hero (how permanent his antagonism towards the Main Four is may vary)). I don't know what this trope would be called, exactly, but Power Trio seems a bit too vague, here. So I'll call them the High Triad, instead.

(Also, if Ukoku is to be believed about Koumyou, then both High Triad Father Figures died at least semi-intentionally for the sake of a plan or promise rather than ever actually being defeated in combat.)

(The High Triad Father Figure version of the Dennis Rafkin-equivalent was actually going to end up taking the role of Nick Hardaway in Stephen King's Rose Red somewhere in the first arc of “The Storyline” of the OC-verse and sacrificing himself to save someone else while the Main Character/Hero that he's raised/taught is either working on getting the deed to Rose Red or just dealing with another supernatural menace elsewhere. When the sacrifice is discovered, I always imagined a scene where someone close to DR responded with anger and started yelling towards that house that “IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO LET YOURSELF DIE, THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS BURN IN HELL LIKE THE REST OF US!”. I feel the need to mention this because that line? It's alluding to two things. The first thing is a backstory-ish thing that's specific to my FrankenFic mindscape in that I distinctly recall reading that Alma in the F.E.A.R. video games persisted because she refused to die. Even her physical body managed to live and move once there wasn't anything holding it in place, anymore. Between Alma's backstory, Samara's in the American version of The Ring and (with some mental editing) Edith Brennan's in Mama, I decided two things; that someone in the Obsessive Family Line probably did some dabbling in genetics and psychic research, and that if the Alma-equivalent/Samara-equivalent/Mama-equivalent and/or the experiments that the Obsessive Family Line would run on psychics are in any way related to DR, then he probably could not actually die without willingly doing so. More importantly, however, it refers to the fact that there is no passing on for DR. Not just in the sense that he's stuck in the Rose Red house, but in the sense that his soul is completely gone. In Yu Yu Hakusho Botan explains that a person's soul belongs in their spirit and their spirit belongs in their body. Well, if a body can exist without a spirit, why can't a spirit exist without a soul? I figure the end result would probably be like Niffins in The Magicians or the archives-keeper's explanation of what ghosts are in Mama. Basically a spirit that has lost all of it's humanity and is fueled only by specific emotions or impulses—usually negative ones. The early chapters of the Yu Yu Hakusho manga actually reference something similar happening to ghosts' sense of self while Yusuke is stuck in spirit form, but it's presented as more of a “natural degradation over time” thing than someone or something forcefully removing and/or destroying a vital part of one's spiritual anatomy.)

Even the gods in Saiyuki and Yu Yu Hakusho follow a sort of pattern that actually makes the remerging of three worlds that were split apart for the sake of divine politics all the more feasible. Who are the least corrupt gods we see in either of these mangas? Why, the Merciful Goddess in Saiyuki and Prince Koenma in Yu Yu Hakusho, of course! And who initially gathered these teams of four together and placed their trust and faith in them time and time again? Why, the Merciful Goddess and Prince Koenma, again! Last one! Which gods in Saiyuki and/or Yu Yu Hakusho would be most willing to undo the Separation and reunite the three worlds in relative harmony to undo countless centuries of corruption, fear-mongering and spite? Wow. Oh, geez, who could see this coming? It's the Merciful Goddess and Prince Koenma! (The parallel divine entity that I chose for the OC-verse's cast was Rāgarāja , who I never really took the time to research beyond Wikipedia due to my lack of intent to actually do anything with these ideas, but since he's a deity who ranks about halfway between the Merciful Goddess and King Enma in the Heavenly Bureaucracy I thought he might work.) I think I'll call them the Divine Benefactors, for the sake of this...whatever this is.

 

While thinking up how all this would work as a single, functional universe, I basically split the timeline of the three worlds into four sections: The History (basically everything that happens before the Separation), The Backstory (what happens after the split into different worlds, but before...well...the next section), The Storyline (pretty much the timeline of the mangas: In Yu Yu Hakusho, this starts when Yusuke gets hit by a car and dies the first time and ends after Enki wins the tournament and becomes king; in Saiyuki this starts when Sanzo and the rest of the Main Four go off to stop the resurrection of Gyumaoh and ends when...however the manga is going to end, I guess; in the OC-verse...???... (in the version in which the Dennis Rafkin-equivalent was the High Triad Father Figure rather than the Main Character/Hero, I imagined the Father Figure, Main Character and Little Sister already having an established dynamic, with them finding, freeing and basically adopting the Smart Guy into their pseudo-family at the beginning of The Storyline)), and The Merge (the reuniting of the three worlds and whatever immediate conflicts that creates for our twelve beloved Main Four characters to deal with). If I assume that the Saiyuki manga is going to end with the imminent threat defeated and all of the Main Four surviving to go home, then that means that all three of the worlds are in a somewhat similar state when the Divine Benefactors decide to go ahead with Operation: Reunite! Think about it, while war and conflict is something that never really goes away, the Main Four who were specifically chosen to take on literally world-threatening supernatural forces are now have some very-much-deserved (relative) downtime and Prince Koenma (and maybe the Merciful Goddess, if the Saiyuki manga goes that direction) is implementing some seriously-needed reforms on how the spirit world (or gods in general, maybe?) interact with humans and youkai.

As for the events of The Merge, in my mind most of the character emphasis ended up on not Yusuke, Sanzo or the Hero/Main Character of the OC-verse; but Kuwabara, Goku and the Smart Guy of the OC-verse (regardless of which version). Not only did they fit a nice pattern of being the other guy in the Main Character/Hero's BFF Pairing, but they seemed like the people who were most likely to be useful in keeping the transition of The Merge as smooth and successful as possible. Kuwabara and Goku are both helpful individuals (especially by the standards of the rest of their respective Main Four) and have abilities that could prove useful to understanding or guiding The Merge, since Goku's life and energy is directly tied to the Earth (in his world, at least) and he may or may not be able to actually create new worlds—depending on whether or not the one shot manga based on the anime's Homura Arc is canon to the rest of Saiyuki's manga or not—while Kuwabara has an amazing natural gift for sensing supernatural influences and the ability to summon the Dimensional Blade which cuts through barriers between worlds and even halves the travel time through spacial dimensions. Both versions of the OC-verse's Smart Guy had some history with and knowledge of the Obsessive Family Line and different dimensions (either directly or indirectly).

(Remember that bit about a Philip Lemarchand-equivalent falling into the “space between spaces”? While that was pretty much my brain fusing the Lemarchand Configuration with Silent Hill, when I found an entirely different fandom on AO3 years after I started thinking about all of this, it lead to my reading a fanfic that sort of gave a perfect explanation for how it works. The fandom is UnderTale, the fic is TotalSkeletonTrash's Chill or Be Chilled, which is a Reader-Insert pairing the...reader, technically, with Sans the Skeleton (if you are an UnderTale fan this is no surprise, if not, it makes more sense in context...). Chapter 26 of this very long fic that I really need to finish reading one day has a fairly sciency explanation for how Sans can teleport (again, context really helps. I spent so much time reading wikipages for this game when I first discovered those fanfictions...) which I will quote portions of here:

“so, i told you i made a doorway, right? punched a hole in the space between point a and point b.”  
“Right.” You confirm, looking at the circle your pointer finger and thumb are still forming. He notices this, and nods to himself, then reaches up to trace your pointer finger and thumb softly with one bony finger.  
“are these two points, your finger and your thumb, are they touching each other?” He asks you, and you blink, because it’s such a silly question.  
“Of course.”  
“no, but are they? if i got the strongest microscope in the world, the universe, so i could look down and see the smallest parts of your finger-”  
“Like the atoms, or um, the protons and neutrons and electrons? The, um, what’s the smaller one than that, the quarks? Gluons?” You mutter, staring at your fingers.  
[…]  
“so, you feel your fingers touching, you see your fingers touching, but you get down on a small enough level, and they’re not touching at all. they’re atoms pushing back against each other through, uh, systems that don’t mean that they need to physically touch each other. they’re separated by space that’s almost impossible to comprehend, but it’s there. the space between the two points. […] that’s the thing, there’s no such thing as a doorway, there’s just tunnels, when you think about it. there’s always some space between.”

Anyways, that's one explanation of how the OC-verse's Smart Guy could have intimate knowledge of inter-dimensional travel and reality-warping. Especially when integrating the Hellraiser and Silent Hill concepts of normal people being dragged into that sort of Eldritch Location through their past traumas or current ambitions. This was basically the backstory for the non-Obseesive-Family-Bloodline version of the Smart Guy, who often interacted with the Little Sister character (who only existed in his version of the theoretical narrative because she has more of a purpose if she's the only member of the Obsessive Family Bloodline consistently on the side of the protagonists) and while I didn't plan for them to have shippy moments, they definitely had a relationship of mutual intellectual respect and understanding. This version of the Smart Guy was often playing mediator between his best friend (the Main Character/Hero) and said best friend's surrogate sister after their shared High Triad Father Figure (who is the Dennis Rafkin-equivalent in this version of the main cast) was no longer around to do so (those two often had very different ideas of what was moral or practical in combating supernatural forces). If you've ever watched the Hellraiser movies or read the Hellbound Heart book...yes, I was totally imagining this character being completely skinned alive in his backstory. The plan was for Little Sister to help Smart Guy temporarily regrow his skin via transplants and treatments until getting access to a potion ala Death Becomes Her which is given with the caveat that Little Sister is more of an expert in machines and computers than chemistry or biology and has no clue if this means that he's basically doubly immortal now or what.)

 

Full disclosure. Because I'm not as good at making original characters or backstories as I am at making worlds for them to run around in, and I didn't really want to use the few character ideas I have on a fanfic that I was sure I'd never actually properly write anyways instead of working them into the original fiction ideas that have been brewing in my head for eternity, I pretty much just absorbed stories and characters that I enjoyed from other people's works into my muddied mental fanfic stew (as you've probably already guessed). The inspiration for what my mind settled(?) on mostly came from the video game series F.E.A.R. and Silent Hill; the movies Death Becomes Her, The Skeleton Key, Eyes Without a Face, The Ring (2002), Thirteen Ghosts (2001), and Mama (2013) (a quick, ultimately pointless note, here: the Edith Brenner character in Mama and Jackal character in Thirteen Ghosts were both committed to asylums in the 1800s. The one in Mama shut down for undisclosed reasons and the one in Thirteen Ghosts was burned down when the Jackal died. I had fun making them both the same asylum in The Backstory...); the movie franchises of Hellraiser (or at least the really, really good book that spawned the franchise) and Saw (which, while it doesn't contain any supernatural or scifi elements, does fit neatly into the Obsessive Family Line with the Jigsaw Killer's backstory and motivation and could cause a very interesting story arc where most of the Main Four and their allies feel that the events are the business of law enforcement rather than themselves due to the lack of supernatural interference, but one or two who are either from the Obsessive Family Line or have seen what they were capable of are seriously concerned with how dangerous the situation really is (I mean, this isn't just one serial killer—Jigsaw gains followers like the Kira Cult from Death Note except since he doesn't use any supernatural forces in his murders anyone could actively participate AND the group continues to grow and murder even after Jigsaw's death!)); and some episodes or character traits from the television shows The Magicians, Supernatural, Doctor Who, House M.D., Bones, The Librarians (2014), and (depending on the character line-up of the OC-verse's Main Four) Malcolm in the Middle. Plus the musical Repo: The Genetic Opera and Stephen King's miniseries Rose Red. That is how FrankenFic this idea got. This is why I don't write fanfiction. That and writing plot is an even bigger weak point for me than characters are.

(I'm actually going to go on a tangent here to explain the Malcolm in the Middle thing... see, the Smart Guy of the Main Four for the OC-verse basically came in two flavors in my mind, both of which were highly dependent on other characters' backstories/roles to prevent more than one OC within the same story being basically the same character. One version had the Smart Guy's origin story revolve around the Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser elements and this character's backstory, strengths/weaknesses and appearance (at the beginning, at least, where the effects of The Backstory have taken a physical toll) could basically be split into two different characters/roles (including the second generation brother of the Obsessive Family Line who was mentioned earlier) if the MitM version took the Smart Guy role instead. The MitM version might stand out a lot from any of the other Main Four characters of all of the worlds involved here due to his sheer amount of siblings, but the fact is I sort of liked the idea of bringing in the “goo-goo-eyed” romance of Hal and Lois into The Backstory and emotional-tension-relieving filler of this world with the Hal-equivalent being a member of the Obsessive Family Line and the Lois-equivalent being a hanyou. In the actual MitM show, Hal has poor impulse control, is prone to really dangerous decisions, obviously bored with his job, deceptively intelligent, and absolutely adores Lois to a degree that wouldn't take much tweaking to reinterpret as an obsession. Meanwhile, Lois acknowledges that their kids get their tempers and sense of retribution from her side of the family and her mother—as sadistic and borderline sociopathic as the woman can seem—cares enough for the family to sacrifice her leg to save one of her grandsons and join another grandson in planning a scheme to preserve his job (although in that case it might just be for the sake of the mayhem the plan will cause...). So, yeah. It seemed to fit the volatile and rebellious but intelligent and passionate nature of that family. Plus everyone in that family tends to be charismatic outcasts who are often vilified by neighbors and authority figures regardless of whether or not they actually did anything wrong. I even came up with Japanese names for all the sons in Malcolm in the Middle. …I may have also incorporated some jokes from the Calvin and Hobbes comics and the first three Thin Man movies but shut up I was enjoying my brainspace. Also, yeah, this is the version of the Smart Guy that would be in a BFF Pairing with the Dennis Rafkin-equivalent version of the Main Character/Hero instead of being skinned alive in “the space between spaces” before becoming part of a pseudo-family unit with the DR-equivalent High Triad Father Figure, the Main Character/Hero and the Obsessive Family Line Little Sister. Basically, the Smart Guy was the lynchpin that shaped how I envisioned the rest of the main cast.)

Anyways, even if nobody uses these ideas (uh, the whole “the worlds were split apart so the Heavenly Bureaucracy could keep things neat and tidy for their own convenience” thing, I mean—not the million ideas from millions of different sources that I basically assimilated into the OC-verse (those ideas are pretty much already used in the source materials...)) for a world in any fic, I really just want to see a Saiyuki/Yu Yu Hakusho crossover that allows the worlds themselves to coexist or integrate instead of just the characters. I think those two worlds could be very interesting together, and while this is how I would merge them if I could write a cohesive story in fanfiction, I am totally open to and interested in any ideas that would result in the awesomeness that I'm sure this crossover could create.

Thank you for reading this.

 

[Disclaimer: I have never seen the Hellraiser or Saw movies. I kind of check out movies that interest me on Wikipedia and TV Tropes before watching them, and while I love the book Hellraiser is based off of and find the psychology behind the Jigsaw Killer fascinating, I have no intention of ever watching those movies. What can I say? I can sit and eat popcorn through beheadings and disembowelings, but watching someone break a finger or loose a leg freaks me out. I've also never played F.E.A.R. or Silent Hill. Not for any complex psychological reason, I just can't afford a gaming console. Oh, and UnderTale. Love the fandom. Love the story. Can't justify spending money on a game that I'll only have the stomach to play twice before guilt devours me from the inside out. Plus I'd probably rage-quit before ever reaching any of the endings, so even achieving True Pacifist is basically a pipe dream.]

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Tsula,
> 
>  
> 
> I seem to recall reading in the header/introduction of a chapter of one of your fic collections on Lunaescence that you aren't a fan of cross-overs—or at least have no intention of ever writing one. Because of that, I apologize if making this a gift to you on AO3 upsets or confuses you. However, since Lunaescence is the site that got me reading Yu Yu Hakusho and Saiyuki Reader-Insert fics—which is what introduced me to those two stories, to begin with!—and you are the only Lunaescence writer who wrote for both fandoms that I have found here on AO3, it felt fitting.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry for any discomfort!
> 
> And thank you for being you.


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